


Temporarily Lost

by AKA_47



Category: The Newsroom (US TV)
Genre: F/M, Season 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-07
Updated: 2015-01-07
Packaged: 2018-03-06 11:42:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3133166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AKA_47/pseuds/AKA_47
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maggie is killed in Uganda leaving Jim to look for someone to blame and Mac as an easy target. His accusations hit close to home, but the family that she's built is strong and love is even stronger. Sometimes it takes a great loss to remember that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Temporarily Lost

**Author's Note:**

> I've been thinking about killing Maggie in Uganda forever (sometimes the things I say scare me). It seemed like a something that could have easily happened if, you know, the writers had a penchant for killing people off at random like I do. I wrote this at least 3 times. I hope you like this version. The title comes from a song in the musical Bridges of Madison County.

All of Mackenzie’s blood seemed to have drained from her veins, replaced with electricity, charging, coursing, threatening to overwhelm. Her whole body trembled with the force of it, her fingertips numb from the tremors, her legs threatening to let her fall to the ground. She felt empty, a shell except for the thrum of the current. _He was right_ was the only thought that she could manage. He was so unbelievably fucking right about all of it, even if he was wrong about so much. He was wrong of course that she didn’t care about Maggie. He was even wrong that she wanted the story. But Maggie wasn’t Mac, hadn’t even been close. She was young and inexperienced and all the research in the world couldn’t prepare a person for the violence, the danger. She knew that if she knew anything at all. It didn’t make her ready. Eagerness and study didn’t mean a God damn thing in the end. But Jim was right. It was her fault.

And she’d told him over the fucking phone. She’d told him that Maggie was dead and she hadn’t even done it in person. If she had, maybe she could have helped him, could have suppressed his anger, but Mac knew that it would have been there even if she’d had a chance to be with him. He needed someone to blame, and it was good that it was her, really, if it kept him from hurting himself with hatred. Mackenzie couldn’t help but think that Jim had his ammunition locked away for years, burying it in loyalty, trying to push it down. That all of the things he’d shouted at her at the funeral home had been the real truth, that maybe he’d thought all of it for a long time and if _he_ had, then what the hell did everyone else think?

When Mac stopped to think about it, most of the funerals she’d been to were for people who (logic said) were far too young to die. At the hands of guns, bombs, war and hatred. To protect. She was used to them now, watching kids mourn kids (and God, she wasn’t old, but sometimes she felt it when she looked at them, imaging the years and years of living with loss they had before them). And now it was one of their own they’d had to bury, which was really, _really_ fucking screwed up. Maggie had died to protect too. There was so much love in that girl, love that she had watched torture Jim from across the room. She knew better than anyone that it didn’t matter one iota whether they’d been in a relationship or not. Maggie and Jim loved each other. They just needed time to come to terms with it. Time they didn’t have now.

That was the real bitch of it. Time. Mac tried to remember all of the sins of her lifetime. When she was a little girl she’d hidden in her parent’s closet for hours to punish them for paying more attention to her sister than her. She’d emerged to find the police in the living room and her mother in hysterics. She’d been punished of course. A day? Two? A week? She couldn’t even remember. She’d stayed out all night with a boy once, or at least that’s what she’d told her dad, just because she knew it was exactly what he didn’t want to hear (in reality the boy in question had been a jerk and she’d left in the middle of the movie they were seeing to stay at her friend’s house). That had earned her father’s silent treatment for at least two weeks. And of course there was Brian, she’d paid her damn penance for that. Years and bullets and a stab wound just to make sure she’d really gotten the enormity of it.

She’d had years of Jim as an ally, when she needed him most, when there seemed to be no one on her side, years to count on him. It was shattered by another sin, an unpardonable one this time. She had no idea how to even guess at what karma had in store for her now.

_“You sent her to Uganda. You knew it was dangerous, but you sent her. She’s not even a reporter! And just because you walk in and promote her one day doesn’t make her one.”_

The words pulsed through her brain, as loud and angry as they were when Jim had spat them out, letting them explode amongst the quiet condolences.

_“She wanted to go, Jim.”_ The truth, but hollow words even to her. She had nothing to offer him, nothing to cushion the blow, not when he’d been in the middle of covering a dull campaign, crushing on a reporter, dreading going back to the girl who Mac knew would be his future one day. He’d been in the middle of that mundane life when she’d called and set everything aflame. That was always the way of it, death. You went about your life thinking that nothing extraordinary would happen, and all of the sudden…but she didn’t tell Jim that. Didn’t need to.

_“Because she wanted to impress you!”_ Jim’s face had been flushed with more fury than she had ever seen in him before. And if that wasn’t the damn truth. She’d heard it before, that people (Will, Jim, the staff) did things because of _her,_ because they wanted to do her proud. Normally, it was a compliment. She knew that she was a good EP, but it never ceased to amaze her the little family that she’d forged out of their project, their show, how much they looked to her, needed her, wanted to please her.

_“She’s not you, Mac! Jesus Christ, you take all these risks and you don’t even think about the consequences. You don’t care. As long as you get the story. So what if a girl gets killed right?”_

It did matter. Of course it mattered. Maggie was the sweet, loyal girl Mac had promoted on her first day, and Mac had told Jim that day that Maggie was the younger version of Mac, but she wasn’t there yet. Hadn’t been there. Shouldn’t have gone to Uganda. Mac wasn’t an idiot, she knew that there were a million factors in Maggie’s death, only a fraction of which had anything to do with her, but Jim hadn’t just been talking about Maggie. All of her sins. There were so many and Mackenzie felt like every time she was done atoning for one another cropped up in its place.

She pulled out her phone, nearly dropping it twice before she managed to dial the number. “Will? I’m sorry to bother you. I just—I’m not doing very well. Can you come over?”

\---

“Mac?”

She was crouched on the floor against her bed, her knees drawn to her chest and her fingers digging into her scalp. Will crouched in front of her, easing her hand away and pressing it into his own.

“Jim kept me sane.” Her voice sounded rough, broken. “He was this optimistic kid. He reminded me why I was doing what I was doing. And just so good, you know? Just a good guy. He’s—he’s part of my family. I should have protected him. I should have protected her.” She looked up at Will then and he didn’t find the tears he’d been expecting. She looked lost, blank.

Will knew more than his fair share about the urge to protect, how quickly people could earn that from him, become part of a family to fight for (Mac, Sloan, all of the staff). He and Mac had always been similar in that way. It was part of what he admired in her. She was willing to risk everything for the sake of the truth, sure, but she was the one who would go down with the ship, not the people she cared about, not the ones she was responsible for. There were few people that selfless, but selflessness also meant bearing the brunt when something terrible happened.

“Jim didn’t mean it,” he assured her.

Mac laughed, but there was no humor in it. “He did.”

Will shook his head. “C’mon. We all know he’d jump in front of a moving train for you.”

“Maybe that’s the problem. I’ve asked him to one too many times.”

Will braced his hands firmly on her shoulders, his gaze unflinching. “Mac, there’s nothing you’ve asked of him, of _me_ , of any of them, that you haven’t earned. You didn’t ask Maggie to go to Uganda. She asked you. You owed her the chance to earn her own respect.”

Mackenzie opened her mouth to argue, but stopped when she saw Will’s expression. “Thank you,” she said instead.

“Any time.”

She stood, easing herself exhaustedly onto her bed. He was glad. She looked like hell. Will started to back out of the room, stopping when he saw her look of alarm.

“Stay?” She asked, barely loud enough for him to hear.

“Of course,” he answered quickly, but hesitated as he looked at her bed.

Mac laughed in earnest. “Just lie down, Billy.”

He obeyed, cautiously easing an arm around her waist, holding her close. She sighed in relief. Will was shocked by how normal, how _right_ it felt, to be that close to her, to listen to her breathing even out, to feel her skin against his. “You’re not alone,” he whispered. “I’m not going anywhere.” He suppressed the urge to add, _I love you,_ even though in that moment he desperately wanted to. It wasn’t the time, not when she might think he’d said it out of pity, or just to console her. He would say it, soon, but for now he held her, protected her, because that’s what they did, what they were good at.

\---

Mac was good at hide and seek, it was how she’d managed to tuck herself away into her parent’s closet without anyone noticing. More than that, she knew Jim, and it didn’t take long for her to find him out on the roof. He leaned against the wall, his legs splayed in front of him, his gaze fixed on the busy city ahead of him (though she doubted he saw it at all).

“Is this seat taken?” She asked, gesturing to the ground next to him.

He shook his head, not taking his eyes off the skyline and she slid down, matching the direction he was looking, watching as her breath misted out in front of her in the crisp October air. She counted her breaths at first, in the silence, before she lost track and listened to the sound of traffic below instead.

“I didn’t—I couldn’t—I was mad at her and I didn’t even bother to call before she left and before that I wasn’t even _nice_ to her. She didn’t deserve that. She just wanted us to be friends and I couldn’t handle it, so I left. I didn’t know—If I’d known…”

_If I’d known._ If she had known she would have done things differently too, a lot of things. “You couldn’t have.” She paused only a fraction of a second before she took his hand in hers. “She knew how you felt, Jim.”

“How?” The question was strangled and she turned to see that he was looking at her, searching, hoping that what she said was true.

“She knew that you left because of her, because you wanted more than a friendship. She just wasn’t ready, but she knew. She knew it was because you cared _too much_ about her, not too little.”

His eyes shone and he laid his head against her shoulder. “I’m sorry. It’s not your fault. I’m not mad at you.”

Mac narrowed her eyes and the corners of his mouth twitched, if only for a second.

“Okay, I _was_ mad at you, but I knew as soon as the words came out of my mouth that they were stupid. It’s not you. It’s just…”

“All of it,” she finished for him.

He swallowed thickly. “Yeah.”

Mackenzie sighed. “Everyone thinks love is fragile. I used to think that, after—but it’s not. I don’t think it ever goes away, no matter what we do. You love Maggie. Maybe even more now that she’s gone. She loved you even when she was trying not to. It didn’t stop because you didn’t call. And I’m not going to stop caring about you just because you shout at me, because we’re family.”

“Family.”

Mac nodded. It was a simple word. It didn’t solve everything, but it meant that they would stick together, that they would never be alone, that someone would always be there to assure them that they could get through the impossible. Love wasn’t fragile at all. It was the strongest thing in the world.

 


End file.
